Taylor Telford reports: Somewhere in Western Australia, a government IT employee is probably laughing or crying or pulling their hair out, or maybe all of the above. A security audit of the Western Australian government released this week by the state’s auditor general found that 26 percent of its officials had weak, common passwords —…
Category: Commentaries and Analyses
Apple removed Facebook’s Onavo from the App Store for gathering app data
Taylor Hatmaker reports: If you were on the edge of your seat wondering what Facebook’s next major consumer privacy headache would be, the wait is over! The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple has deemed Facebook-owned app Onavo in violation of its App Store policies and will be giving it the boot shortly. In a…
Canadian Telcos Patch Vulnerability in TRS Systems
Catalin Cimpanu reports on a vulnerability first reported by Project Insecurity researchers: All major Canadian internet service providers (ISPs) have patched a vulnerability this week in their telecommunications relay services (TRSs). TRS systems, or IP-relays, are telco-provided services that allow people with disabilities —such as deafness or speech disorders— to place calls to standard telephone…
How K–12 School Districts Can Best Prepare for Ransomware Recovery
Karen Scarfone reports: No matter how many layers of security school districts put in place to stop ransomware, it’s inevitable that, at some point, an endpoint will be infected. Since January 2016, there have been 355 cybersecurity-related incidents against K–12 schools, including ransomware attacks, according to the K–12 Cybersecurity Resource Center. In 2016, 60 percent…
NHS trusts lost or misplaced 9,100 patient records last year
The Commentator reports: The National Health Service (NHS) has lost almost 10,000 patient records in the last year, according to new research from leading tech think tank Parliament Street. The findings are disclosed in a new report entitled ‘NHS Data Security: Protecting Patient Records’ examines the amount of patient records that have been misplaced from…
Toronto man sues Facebook $500,000 for ‘anxiety’ related to Cambridge Analytica breach
Meagan Simpson reports that a Toronto man is suing Facebook Inc., Facebook Canada, and Cambridge Analytica. The basis for his suit is that he has experienced hundreds of unwarranted calls and emails since the breach, he claims, and those calls and emails are due to the breach of his information. The whole experience, he alleges,…